Finally, in sheer self defence we bought it, hoping to have peace. To be sure the miserable little humbug shut up regularly in the middle of the night, smothering us in the pillow shams and giving us quite a turn, Still we got our lives insured and the advertisements no longer bothered us. In the same way it has been hurled at us now for eighteen years, that Above is Heaven, below are Soo and Hang." We had got pretty tired of it. One day during the Conference a very hospitable and warm-hearted friend gave us a cordial invitation to go to Soochow and visit him. We accepted joyfully. We hoped to lay Soochow even more effectually than we had laid the pillow sham ghost; now we should know once for all if it had a right to take to itself such airs. We eng: a boat and put our dishes and bedding on board. We were to use the dishes coming back. A. kind friend who with his wife and four children was returning to Soochow had invited us to eat on his boat going. Wo were to meet him in the evening at a certain bridge. I went on board in the afternoon with the boat owner. Please tell the lowdah," I said, "that he must find the boat belonging to Mr. Grass, and keep the two boats together, as we are tu eat with them, and have no food on our own boat." So he told the man. At least he said he did, All I heard was something in that forlorn, disjointed, shiftless lingo, the Shanghai dialect, where no word seems to be finished up clean and strong, but where each word seems to have been picked up and hastily dropped in the middle, that the speaker may push on with mad haste to Keep his appointment with the next word. In the evening we went on bard, I mean we tried to, 1 sat and shivered on the bridge' while Mr. Jones and the coolie searched and shouted, for half an hour, up and down the canal. At Jast the boat was found and we took possession, And the other boat, was it alongside? Yes, at least so the boatman said. I have felt surer of sume things than I did of the inmates of that boat, but as it was still and dark on board, what could we do? A man never wakes up any but his first baby to see it smile, and a woman who has had three children never wakes up a woman with four children to know if it is really she, so we took it on trust, and thankfully retook us to sleep, In just one hour and a half, a firm but persuasive voice stole into our slumbers. It was the gentle lowdah. '*Shessuny! Shessung now in the name of all that's reasonable, if he meant teacher, why didn't he say Hsien sheng like a Christian?) ' Shéssung jus now boat can walkee?" The last word of each sentence of his had a soft south slide to it that was like a caress. It reminded me of the sympathetic boy in one of the dental offices in Shanghai, who looks so sorry, pats one on the back when a touth is drawn, and says " My jinkee soon well We were dreadfully tired, but it was impossible to be angry with the amiable creature, so we rubbed our eyes and inquired, "That piecee boat have got master? have got missee? have got four piece chile?" "My no savoy. One piecee man jus now no have got. Tide make; my jinkee boat more better can walkee." This was a little hazy, but it was all we could get out of our Bureau of Information, so we decided_to wait. We discussed the situation and I'm sorry to say Mr. Jones did just what might have been expected. Now he is a good man in the main, has no vices and his pew rent promptly, but his mind Jarge enough to resist one temptation. "My dear", he said, "I don't see why you weren't' more careful about our place of meeting. Why didn't you have another interview to arrange it? Why didn't
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.